Ristic: Some Media Outlets in Serbia Promote Violence, Call for Overthrow

Dejan Ristic (BETAPHOTO/MILAN OBRADOVIC)

Minister of Information and Telecommunications Dejan Ristic said on Aug. 26 that some media outlets in Serbia promoted violence, allowing their guests to call for the overthrow of the constitutional order, murders of Serbian citizens, top-ranking government officials, and the use of physical violence against them.

"Being responsible for the relevant government department, I am conducting intensive consultations with directors, editors-in-chief, and editors of Serbia’s leading media, including the media outlets within the United Group. We have had several meetings on this topic. I am appealing for professionalism, but on the other hand, I am also making an announcement that the state will react in those extreme cases, when the Public Information Act and the Media Act are violated, when hate speech is promoted, when personal dignity is undermined, and so on," Ristic said to reporters at the Palace of Serbia.

The minister also said that journalists should react when a person they interviewed, “consciously or unconsciously, explicitly or implicitly. commits verbal violence or calls for violence against someone."

President of the European Federation of Journalists Maja Sever said in an interview with N1 that accusations by Serbian officials that the United Media’s journalists were preparing an assassination attempt on Aleksandar Vucic "may be the spark that can be very dangerous for the lives, safety and work" of the people in the media.

"This is extremely dangerous for you, the journalists, for you who in the studio, for you in the field... These attacks by Aleksandar Vucic and Ana Brnabic on the owner of one media outlet, in this case, your media, can, unfortunately, have very dangerous, ugly effects on the safety and work of journalists," Sever has warned.